A Repository for Bottled Monsters: Teddy Bear Clinic on Saturday

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Teddy Bear Clinic on Saturday

Teddy Bear Clinic to take place Saturday, September 12

On Saturday, September 12 from 1-3 p.m., the National Museum of Health and Medicine will its first Teddy Bear Clinic. It should be a lot of fun!

We’re asking kids in PreK-3 to 2^nd grade to bring their favorite stuffed animals to be checked out by the experts. First they’ll visit a craft station where they’ll make doctor’s headbands, nurse’s hats, and doctor’s bags. Then, they’ll visit several stations where their stuffed animal’s vitals and teeth will be checked, shots will be administered, and healthy eating and exercising habits will be discussed. (Hopefully the kids will learn a few things, too!) At the end of the program, their friend will be issued a clean bill of health certificate.

This will be the last in a series of programs that were designed to complement the exhibition entitled “David Macaulay Presents: The Way We Work.” The exhibit closes on September 20, so stop by soon if you haven’t had a chance to see it.

The Public Programs staff would like to thank Aileen Mavity, one of the museum’s summer interns, for her help in designing this program!

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Who are we?

Mike Rhode was the chief archivist of the Museum from 1989-2011, and is the founder of this blog. I maintain an interest in the course of the museum, and will be posting relevant information.

The Army Medical Museum was founded in 1862 during the American Civil War. After World War II, a parent-child relationship was inverted and the Museum became part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Since then, the Museum has moved around Washington, stopping for years in Ford's Theatre, and on the National Mall where the building it shared with the National Library of Medicine once stood, until it was demolished in 1968 for the Hirshhorn Museum. For 35 years it was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and now is in Silver Spring, MD.

So what about that blog name?

It's historical. I found it in a quote from one of the former curators. World War II confirmed the Army Medical Museum's primary role in pathology consultation. James Ash, the curator during the war and a pathologist, noted, "Shortly after the last war, more concerted efforts were instituted to concentrate in the Army Medical Museum the significant pathologic material occurring in Army installations." He closed with the complaint, "We still suffer under the connotation museum, an institution still thought of by many as a repository for bottled monsters and medical curiosities. To be sure, we have such specimens. As is required by law, we maintain an exhibit open to the public, but in war time, at least, the museum per se is the least of our functions, and we like to be thought of as the Army Institute of Pathology, a designation recently authorized by the Surgeon General."

After the war, it evolved into the tri-service Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

A Repository for Bottled Monsters

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Thursday, September 10, 2009

Teddy Bear Clinic on Saturday

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